Farmers and informal traders in the Zambezi region are counting their losses as foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) restrictions bring livestock sales and meat businesses to a halt.
The Zambezi region confirmed an FMD outbreak at Kalala Island in the Kabbe constituency on 7 October after 12 cattle samples collected for testing returned positive results.
This has led to the suspension of livestock auctions, movement restrictions and a ban on slaughtering.
The outbreak came weeks after Namibia confirmed the outbreak of FMD in the ||Kharas region last month.
Kongola farmer Glen Shebo yesterday said cattle are an important source of income for farmers who sell their animals to pay school fees, buy food and cover other household expenses.
“Money needed for school fees, household supplies, and agricultural inputs for the upcoming planting season is suddenly locked up in herds that cannot be sold. Daily and mostly on weekends we used to congregate at Choto for kapana, but all this has gone down the drain. How will these people now feed their family members?” he asks.
Livestock farmer Christopher Ndereki from the Lake Lyambezi area says the restrictions are preventing him from buying or selling meat and meat products.
He says farmers in the area have been without an official market since the Meatco Corporation of Namibia abattoir closed in June.
He says he previously earned money by slaughtering cattle and selling meat to vendors, but the restrictions have stopped this business.
“We have survived previous severe FMD outbreaks in the region, so we come out of this as well,” he says.
Meat vendor Iuze Simasiku says the restrictions have left her without an income.
She says she used to earn about N$10 000 a month from slaughtering cattle and selling beef in bulk.
“What am I going to sell for the duration of this outbreak? Imagine, December is fast approaching, and I will not have money, even for school stationary,” she says.
Pensioner Patricia Muyumbelo says she also faces financial difficulties after the restrictions affected her sour milk business.
She says she used to earn about N$1 500 a month selling sour milk to supplement her old-age pension grant of N$1 700.
“Hopefully, FMD will be over soon. I used to make N$1 500 as an extra income on top of my old-age pension grant, and it used to make a difference in my life and those of my grandchildren,” she says.
‘NO LINK’
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, Water and Land Reform spokesperson Romeo Muyunda this week said the two outbreaks are not linked.
He said managing outbreaks in two regions would place further pressure on the ministry’s resources and the economy.
“We are not going to be sleeping for a while now. This, of course, will cause strain not only on the economy but for us, as well as the ministry. We need to put in place the resources to tackle the different outbreaks in the different regions,” he said.
Muyunda said the ministry has started emergency vaccination to contain the outbreak and will not cull infected animals.
He said vaccination against FMD has been taking place in the Zambezi region because it has long been classified as an infected zone.
The Namibia Agricultural Union says the Zambezi region outbreak differs from the one in the ||Kharas region because it has historically been classified as an FMD-infected zone.
“There is no reason to panic,” the union said.
The post Zula to survive appeared first on The Namibian.